Governance innovation as social imaginaries: challenges of post-NPM

ABSTRACT

The effects of NPM have been criticized for decades and we are now seeing how alternative, post-NPM, governance innovations emerge. What joins these innovations is the critique against NPM and the ambition to provide new ways of governing public organizations. From a critical stance, we engage in a discussion of governance innovations from the perspective of social imaginaries and analyse post-NPM from dystopian and utopian viewpoints. We argue that the main legitimacy for post-NPM lies in it demonizing NPM, whereas a more fruitful way forward would entail incorporating elements of NPM to create a holistic governance model for the future.

KEYWORDS:

• NPM
• post-NPM
• magic concepts
• social imaginaries
• governance innovation

Introduction

It is commonly held that the only constant is change. This holds true for physics as well as (public) administration. Ever since government was invented, we have tried to change it by imposing new ideas, practices, and norms. In fact, government itself can be understood as an invention aimed at changing the authority over the commons. History is full of attempts to develop, change, improve or innovate management and organizing principles in public organizations. In this article, we discuss these attempts to reform the public sector as governance innovations, i.e. the idea or implementation of new methods, norms, modes of accountability, etc. In retrospect, it is obvious that such governance innovations have varied greatly. Hood and Jackson (1991) discuss how the composition of different administrative arguments has varied enormously over time. In their list of the 99 most common arguments, a combinability of innumerable amounts of potential governance innovations is created. What constitutes good governance varies over time, reforms come and go (Light 1997) and even the view of what efficiency is – perhaps the most celebrated and feared concept of our time – varies over time (Downs and Larkey 1986). Governance fashions go back and forth, and it is not uncommon for older governance innovations to be repackaged and remarketed as new or improved innovations (Karlsson 2017; Lapsley and Knutsson 2017; Wockelberg and Ahlbäck Öberg 2014). Although not all innovations are deemed successful, they all carry the same fundamental aim, making the public sector work better.

The latest attempt of bringing in governance innovations is in the public administration literature discussed under the label of post-NPM (Christensen and Lægreid 2011; Funck and Karlsson 2020; Pollitt 2016; Reiter and Klenk 2019; Wittbom and Irene Häyrén 2021) and among public sector accounting scholars as the centrality of bringing in publicness and paying attention to public values (Bracci et al. 2019, 2021; Guthrie and Russo 2014; Steccolini 2019). Even though the exact meaning of post-NPM is debated, and by some authors have been described as a shopping basket of selected reform elements (Christensen 2012), others (Reiter and Klenk 2019; Torfing et al. 2020) discuss how the aim of attenuating the negative consequences of NPM is what unite governance innovations such as New Public Governance (Osborne, Radnor, and Strokosch 2016), Public Service Logic (Alford 2016) and Public Value Management (Moore 1995). Post-NPM stems from a deep-seated critique of NPM’s emphasis on efficiency, production, and the marketization of public services (Alford 2016; O’Flynn 2007; Osborne 2006). Post-NPM reforms are mainly inter-organizationally oriented and focus on integration and coordination (Christensen 2012). In the post-NPM literature, there is a notable shift towards adopting a holistic management approach, emphasizing coordination and cooperation, particularly in horizontal dimensions (Christensen and Lægreid 2007; Lodge and Gill 2011). Hence, underpinning the heading of post-NPM are values such as self-organization rather than top-down approaches, public managers leading rather than managing, and a stronger focus on outcomes, effectiveness, promoting public values, and fostering dialogues, and trust in professions (Lapsley 2022; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2017; Reiter and Klenk 2019).

In this article, we focus on the normative ideas within the post-NPM literature and analyse the theoretical challenges of these new alternative governance innovations, intended to address the negative consequences of NPM. From a theoretical perspective, we engage the concept of social imaginaries (Chen and Tan Chen 2021; Gaonkar 2002; Taylor 2002, 2007) to enable a discussion of whether the promises made in the post-NPM literature have the capacity to be realized. Social imaginaries are understood as collective ideas of understanding complex issues that encourage societies to adopt specific structures and solutions (Levy and Spicer 2013), an alternative way of governing and organizing the public sector, for example. Social imaginaries should not be understood as a derogatory term for unrealized reforms, but as hopeful expectations or created ideas of something that could happen. From this perspective, we can find social imaginaries that are both utopian and dystopian (Chen and Tan Chen 2021), all with a normative understanding (having a moral order) of how to live our lives, or – as is the case in this article – how good governance should be created. Analysing governance innovations this way resembles other studies, wherein ideas (Campbell 2002, 2004; Greve 2015) or administrative doctrines (Hood and Jackson 1991) have been used to understand governance innovation and public sector change. We argue that there is a need to critically discuss the novelty and viability of post-NPM ideas in relation to NPM. This discussion needs to take the completeness of post-NPM alternatives into consideration to analyse its capability to move beyond NPM (Bryson, Crosby, and Bloomberg 2014; Christensen, Lie, and Lægreid 2008).

Coming from the position that government innovations are social imaginaries, the message of this article is that post-NPM will face challenges when trying to replace NPM. The aim of this article is critical, where we contribute to the discussion on the current state of NPM and the growing literature which focuses on moving beyond NPM. From a conceptual perspective, we engage in a discussion about the layering effect of NPM and post-NPM. This article is divided into two parts. In the first part, we elaborate on the concept of social imaginaries and explain how and why the concept is applicable for understanding governance innovations such as NPM or post-NPM. We expand this discussion by presenting four post-NPM imaginaries. Our second half of the article engages in a critical discussion of post-NPM in relation to NPM, specifically targeting the capacity of these imaginaries to be globally realized and institutionalized in public organizations and the challenges they face.

Moral orders and social imaginaries

Within the field of public governance – whether it be from academia or from practitioners – we often encounter arguments that paint a dire picture of imminent disaster. Current governance models (read NPM) are commonly criticized for not taking democracy into account (Alford and O’Flynn 2009; Gains and Stoker 2009), for focusing too narrowly on measurable quantitative entities (Gains and Stoker 2009; Lindsay, Osborne, and Bond 2014; Steccolini 2019), or for creating a silo mentality within public organizations (Dunleavy et al. 2006; Osborne 2006). The critique is also quite often accompanied by different types of proposals that are meant to address these otherwise insurmountable challenges (read post-NPM). This is where we start, in the proposals constructed as alternatives to the current regime. We approach this through the concept of social imaginaries. Social imaginaries are rooted in Sartre’s ([1940] 2004 idea of images. According to Sartre, people have a need to create images in their minds to remember or bring to life what they encounter in the world. These images constitute a mental representation of what he wants to remember or understand. It is partly from this perspective that sociologists have advanced the concept to give it further theoretical meaning. Taylor (2007) argues that societies as a collective mind can produce images of the society. He writes that social imaginaries can be understood as ‘the way in which our contemporaries imagine the societies they inhabit and sustain’ (p. 161). Expanding on this, social imaginaries are about how we should live our lives or present us with images of how this life should be lived. It gives us a picture of how things are now and how they could be in the future. It presents us with means by which we can understand our identities or our place in the world (Gaonkar 2002).

The normative aspect of social imaginaries – that the images create meaning in and of themselves – is discussed in the literature as moral orders (Taylor 2007). Taylor (2007) understands these as the rights and obligations that different individuals feel they have in relation to each other. Wuthnow (1987, 14) describes it a little more down to earth, namely that moral orders are about ‘what is proper to do and reasonable to expect’. In this way, moral orders are something more profound than just a set of common norms or values; they are the collective perception of how society has functioned, functions and should function.

It is important to state here that we do not subscribe to the idea that there is one single social imaginary that deterministically dominates society. Instead, actors are constantly surrounded by multiple and sometimes contradictory social imaginaries (Gaonkar 2002; Taylor 2002). Individuals can live with several different social imaginaries at the same time. Castoriadis (1987) argues that this is possible because social imaginaries in many ways indicate the status of ‘what is’. That is, our current understanding of where we are now and where we come from.

In this article, we have been inspired by critical organization theory, where the idea of social imaginaries as a disruptive factor has emerged. This literature reflects a more action-based agenda, aiming to change and improve existing norms, values, or practices. Chen and Tan Chen (2021) base their arguments on science fiction literature and argue that change needs to start with the questions (i) ‘what if’, (ii) ‘if only’, and (iii) ‘if this goes on’. These three different parts create possible paths for society to change. The last of these options – ‘if this goes on’ – paints a dystopian picture of the current state and especially the future that will be realized if an intervention is not possible. The situation is not deterministic per se, but given the normative effect of social imaginaries, it risks becoming just that. Chen and Tan Chen (2021) argue that dystopian imaginaries often risk leading to current conditions (which are often perceived as stable, even if they are not always positive) not being changed at all. For example, they argue that the bureaucratic form – which is prevalent in public organizations – serves as a fuel for ‘if this goes on’ futures. Bureaucracy is such a strongly deterministic social imaginary that actors have difficulty even imagining any other way of organizing. According to Chen and Tan Chen (2021), the mere existence of a social imaginary is not enough for change to occur. It should also be forward looking in the form of ‘what if’ (future) and ‘if only’ (utopia) questions. In the context of modern governance innovations, imaginaries should be driven by thinking about possible future scenarios, but not only dystopian (‘if this goes on’) ones.

From the perspective of social imaginaries as a foundation for individuals’ understanding of their social existence, we argue that it is more than just wishful thinking. Social imaginaries include ideas, values, and norms that serve to create possible future scenarios. Social imaginaries are highly normative (Taylor 2007) in that they map out a way forward. The multiplicity of social imaginaries enables several different and competing ideas about public governance to exist simultaneously. It is also expected that different social imaginaries are filled with different vocabularies of motives (Grünberg and Matei 2020). These vocabularies are reflections of specific social imaginaries and link them – individually or in groups – to the rest of the surrounding society and enable people to make sense of their world (Dumais 1975; as referenced in; Grünberg and Matei 2020). This means that people do things with words (Austin 1962). From an actor's perspective, emergent social imaginaries can act as a much-needed valve through which frustration and irritation can be vented. But they can also serve as a platform for free and innovative thinking (Hudson and Rönnblom 2020).

To round off this part of the discussion, we argue that moral orders and social imaginaries are important pieces in understanding how different governance innovations are filled with possibility and legitimacy (Taylor 2007). The promotion of new ideas – usually understood as alternatives (Chen and Tan Chen 2021) – is needed to renew public governance. This shaping of the (possible) future contains attempts of prediction and promises in relation to concepts, but more importantly instances of legitimation of the ideas and delegitimations of other contesting ideas (Taylor 2007).

Four types of post-NPM imaginaries

Post-NPM is a very elusive concept. Lodge and Gill (2011) go so far as to state that it is an impossible task to define post-NPM whereas Klenk and Reiter (2019) is more cautious, merely admitting that it is a vague term, commonly used to portray general pictures of change within the public sector. Even though being almost impossible, Reiter and Klenk (2019) makes a compelling argument in their systematic literature review, stating that although post-NPM has no one exact meaning it often refers to changes of coordination, steering capacity, and strengthening politics. It is not uncommon to find arguments that post-NPM will increase public sector performance (Ferlie, Hartley, and Martin 2003) by advocating re-centralization and functional integration (Christensen 2012; Christensen and Lægreid 2011; Reiter and Klenk 2019), yet scholars are hard-pressed to present any clear dominant governance model for how (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2017). The one thing that connects different ideas of post-NPM is that it is distinctly different from NPM (Reiter and Klenk 2019).

In this article, we engage post-NPM from the theoretical viewpoint of social imaginaries. This means that we have identified post-NPM imaginaries – or theories – which entail ideas, norms, and values that challenge NPM. It also means that we acknowledge that multiple and sometimes contradictory imaginaries surround actors at all times (Gaonkar 2002; Taylor 2002). An obstacle for this article is that there exist no specific theories that are labelled post-NPM. Instead, we find that the literature often connects different theories with the concept. Lapsley (2022) for instance, argues that new public governance and digital-era governance are early challengers of NPM and should be labelled post-NPM. Lodge and Gill (2011) presents similar arguments but makes the connection to digital-era governance and public values. Another set of theories is presented by Greve (2015) who discusses post-NPM as a collection of self-styled alternatives to NPM, explicitly highlighting collaborative government or new public governance, digital-era governance, and public value management. Finally, Grossi and Argento (2022) discuss network governance, collaborative governance, and digital governance as three forms of public governance developments which go beyond traditional accounting and control envisaged by NPM and instead try to re-establish the focus on public values.

Following the above, we see post-NPM as a collection of imaginaries – or normative ideas about the future – which are self-styled alternatives to NPM (Greve 2015). To cover different imaginaries, we have selected four that we deem covers a large part of this literature: (i) new public governance, (ii) public service logics, (iii) public value management, and (iv) digital-era governance.

New public governance (NPG) was coined by Osborne (2006) when he addressed some of the core deficiencies of NPM. In his seminal article The New Public Governance? Osborne argued that NPM primarily should be understood as metaphorical stopover in the historical evolution of public governance. From his perspective, neither traditional public administration nor NPM was fit to meet the demands of 21^st century public organizations. For this purpose, a holistic approach towards governance was needed. The general critique towards NPM is directed at its one-sided focus on cost-efficiency (Carey and Matthews 2017) and intra-organizational structures. Above all, it is argued, NPM fails to deal with wicked issues (Rittel and Webber 1973) as it lacks the analytical tools to deal with such situations (Velotti, Botti, and Vesci 2012). The solution in NPG is the acceptance of the pluralistic state, in which private as well as public organizations can be service providers. In this way, NPG highlights the importance of inter-organizational cooperation (Lindsay, Osborne, and Bond 2014; Osborne 2006), coordination rather than competition (Brinkerhoff and Brinkerhoff 2011), and trust rather than control (Lane and Bachmann 1998; Paletta 2012).

Public service logic draws on the literature on service production (Lusch and Vargo 2006; Vargo and Lusch 2008) arguing that as the public sector primarily is a service provider, the logics of organizing and governing it through a production logic is inherently flawed (Alford 2016). The underpinning idea in public service logic lies in understandings of goods dominant logics (GDL) and service dominant logics (SDL). Traditional public administration (to some degree) and NPM is constructed around an idea of the first (Hodgkinson et al. 2017). According to this logic, products can be produced, marketed, and stocked if necessary. Services, on the other hand, are produced and consumed simultaneously (Lusch and Vargo 2006). In addition, it is argued that values are co-created by providers and recipients together, but the valuation of good or bad services is predominantly made by the recipient. From a governance perspective, this has several implications. Firstly, as public services are no longer perceived as products, the coordination of activities cannot be linked to an idea of manufacturing or production. That means that more attention needs to be addressed to how and when resources are being used. Secondly, as value is first and foremost constructed by the recipient, public servants need to be more empathic towards citizens’ requests and experiences when meeting the public. Value thereby becomes co-created (Eriksson 2019; Osborne, Radnor, and Strokosch 2016). An implication of this could be that the public becomes afraid of mistreating citizens not primarily due to the mistreatment as such, but rather that the co-produced value would be reduced.

Public value management comes from Moore (1995) work in his book Creating Public Value. One of the key questions in that book concerned the question of how civil servants could be made to work more efficiently with politicians. The fundamental idea was to facilitate a development of understanding about what makes the public sector so special (Goss 2001; Ranson and Steward 1989). In the idea of creating public value, resides the idea that management of public organizations is something entirely different than management of large business corporations interested in profit (Moore 2003). In fact, Moore (1995) argues that the creation of public value is, or should be, in focus for all public management, just as the creation of stakeholder value should be the focus of private management. O’Flynn (2007) argues that public value management is post-competitive, about relationships, and allowing for multiple objectives and accountability. In contrast, new public management is portrayed as competitive, results oriented, and focused on inputs and outputs. Aldridge and Stoker (2002) has argued for the advancement of a public service ethos where issues of service performance, transparent accountability, accessibility, and well-being should be in focus for public management. Public value management is, however, not free from traditional management accounting. Several scholars have suggested that value management should be accompanied by performance measurements (Horner and Hutton 2011), use of process management (Thomson 2017), or the use of value chain management (Porter 1985).

Digital-era governance is the fourth social imaginary that we include in post-NPM. This concept comes from the work of Dunleavy, Margetts, Bastow, et al. (2006) and Dunleavy, Margetts, Tinkler, et al. (2006). This approach implicates that public services need to be provided in new ways. The key reason for this is that citizens expect other forms of communication and service provision in the digital era as compared to more traditional approaches to public services. Digital-era governance resides on three thematic reforms. Firstly, the reintegration of public services. In contrast to new public management, digital-era governance professes the need to integrate different governmental agencies with each other and to take back areas that have been outsourced. Restructuration of information technology will be an important step in this reintegration. Secondly, engaging in needs-based holism which means to take citizens’ needs as the primary factor for constructing public services. The use of one-stop-shops is central in the needs-based holism, allowing for citizens to encounter the public easily and efficiently. The public sector should be agile and aspiring to flexible and quick decisions. Thirdly, digital processes. This means that more services should be offered through different digital platforms. The latter, it is stated, will bring the citizen closer to the public organization, increase transparency and flexibility and consequently improve public value.

The four post-NPM imaginaries and important references are summarized in Table 1.

Table 1. Summary of social imaginaries of post-NPM.

Social imaginaries of post-NPM	References (example)	Key concepts
New Public Governance (NPG)	Osborne (2006), Osborne (2010), Klijn and Koppenjan (2012)	Network Pluralistic state Co-operation Welfare service Trust Negotiations Interorganizational focus
Public Service Logic	Osborne (2010), Alford (2016), Lusch and Vargo (2006)	Service logic Services Co-creation Co-production Co-construction
Public Value Management (PVM)	Moore (1995), Moore (2003), O’Flynn (2007), Alford and O’Flynn (2009), Stoker (2006)	Public value Collaboration Networks Democracy Trust and respect Continuous improvements Flexibility
Digital-Era Governance (DEG)	Dunleavy et al. (2006) Dunleavy et al. (2006)	Reintegration Holism Agile Transparent Citizens as co-producers

The challenges of moving beyond NPM

Although it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what post-NPM is, we have above described it as a set of self-styled alternatives to NPM (Greve 2015). As such it contains different normative ideas of how public governance can move beyond NPM (Bryson, Crosby, and Bloomberg 2014; Christensen, Lie, and Lægreid 2008). We conceptualize this as social imaginaries with specific sets of moral orders, designated to create future possible scenarios (Taylor 2007) of public governance. In the remainder of this article, we will discuss some of the central challenges which post-NPM imaginaries face when advocating the move beyond NPM. To sketch out these arguments we discuss post-NPM as (i) social imaginaries built on persuading narratives, (ii) focusing on society and organizing rather than managerial accountability, and (iii) unidimensional governance innovations. We then continue with a critical discussion which revolves around the current state of NPM and the capabilities that post-NPM imaginaries must replace NPM.

Social imaginaries built on persuading narratives

All social imaginaries arise as ideas and then work towards diffusing them in broader social circles (Taylor 2007). What begins as simple ideas becomes gospel, something that a wider set of actors can believe in and, in turn, spread to other actors. Ideas becomes gospel which becomes imaginaries. Social imaginaries must be underpinned by a strong persuading story to gain momentum. We identify these stories as persuading narratives (Llewellyn 1999). A key characteristic of the persuading narrative is that it has embedded magic concepts, which are ‘very broad, normatively charged and lay claim to universal or near universal application’ (Pollit and Hupe 2011). This means that the persuasive ingredient resides in the use of certain words or expressions (Carey and Malbon 2018). This corresponds with the already mentioned vocabulary of motives (Grünberg and Matei 2020) which are reflections of existing or emerging social imaginaries needed to make sense of the world (Dumais 1975). The moral order (Taylor 2002) embedded in the social imaginary becomes visible when analysing these magic concepts and vocabulary of motives.

Let us begin by looking at the words, message, and rhetoric of post-NPM. One of the first things that strikes us is the extensive use of distinctly loaded terms and words with strong positive connotations. For example, post-NPM is centred around such words as trust, collaboration, and holistic approach (Lindsay, Osborne, and Bond 2014; Osborne 2006; Paletta 2012). Moreover, it deliberates networks, coordination and how public organizations should focus on being more empathic towards citizens to build public value (Eriksson 2019; Moore 1995; Osborne, Radnor, and Strokosch 2016; Paletta 2012). The message is difficult to neglect or disapprove with. Who would even dream of advocating distrust, lack of empathy, non-holistic approaches, or governance without public value? Following this line of reasoning, concepts such as trust and collaboration are not easily contradicted as most people know them to be inherently good. The words ingrain post-NPM with rhetorical elements which form persuading narratives that can mobilize support and seduce people (Meier and Hill 2007). Its seductive nature and tendency towards implied consensus also allow a broad agreement from all political domiciles, users of public services, as well as employees and managers of local government. We also find, in relation to the rhetoric and use of magic concepts, that the post-NPM literature is very clear about what it is not. The prefix ‘post’ indicates a distance away from, and an alternative to, NPM. Post-NPM is not about cost-efficiency (Carey and Matthews 2017), it is not production (Hodgkinson et al. 2017), and it is certainly not about internal management focus (Alford 2016). From this perspective, NPM is usually constructed as a dystopian past (Chen and Tan Chen 2021) and different post-NPM imaginaries are necessary interventions which will shape a better (utopian) future. To further this distinction between a dystopian past and a utopian future, post-NPM imaginaries are commonly argued to be the next step in the evolution. For example, whereas NPM progresses a production focus and efficiency in the form of specialization (Christensen and Lægreid 2011), post-NPM advocates a service focus and holistic understanding of the public sector (Reiter and Klenk 2019) and when NPM is about competition, post-NPM is about collaboration (Osborne 2006). The vocabularies of motives (Grünberg and Matei 2020) or moral orders (Taylor 2002) are constructed as different from NPM, thus legitimizing post-NPM as a governance innovation.

Perhaps ironically, the narratives we now connect with post-NPM imaginaries could easily have been narratives from four decades ago, although at that time connected to the emergence of NPM. At that time, preceding governance ideas such as progressive public administration, traditional bureaucracy, or old public administration were slow, inflexible, focused on micro-management, and very costly (Dunleavy and Hood 1994; Hood 1995). NPM was then argued to be the necessary intervention to avoid the dystopian past of bureaucracy. History, it seems, repeats itself even in cases of governance innovations (Hood 1991; Hood and Jackson 1991; Light 1997).

To conclude this first section, we argue that post-NPM imaginaries have the potential to spread very quickly. The reason for this is that its vocabulary of motives (Grünberg and Matei 2020) and moral orders (Taylor 2002) positions it as a governance innovation that has the capacity to move beyond NPM (Bryson, Crosby, and Bloomberg 2014; Christensen, Lie, and Lægreid 2008). However, this distancing away from NPM becomes imperative for its own definition: post-NPM is primarily different from NPM. The persuading narrative gives post-NPM a façade of modernity, which further underscores its legitimacy as a governance innovation. This implies an almost indisputable moral supremacy compared to NPM ideas and practices, and adopters of post-NPM ideas will be regarded as modern public organizations as the narratives follow a seemingly modern imaginary. Nevertheless, a definition built on what it is not (rather than what it is) gives rise to a high level of ambiguity (Benders and Van Veen 2001). From the above, one might ask what post-NPM is. In the ensuing discussion, we posit that post-NPM imaginaries encompass three interrelated focal points, all directed towards governance and organizing principles.

Focus on society and organizing rather than managerial accountability

We have already established that post-NPM as a governance innovation aims to portray itself as an alternative with a capacity to move beyond NPM (Bryson, Crosby, and Bloomberg 2014; Christensen, Lie, and Lægreid 2008). Inherent in these alternatives we can find arguments of what needs to be changed. In this section, we will highlight three principal points or focuses. They are connected in that they are directed towards normative ideas about governance and organizing principles rather than on managerial accountability.

Firstly, post-NPM focuses on new ways to govern public services. Whereas NPM has been focused on an intraorganizational perspective for increasing efficiency (Carey and Matthews 2017; Lindsay, Osborne, and Bond 2014; Osborne 2006) emphasizing that competition drives it, post-NPM imaginaries questions such marketization and instead discuss reintegration, cooperation, holism, and networking (Klijn and Koppenjan 2012; Osborne, Radnor, and Strokosch 2016; Paletta 2012; Stoker 2006). Hence, instead of intraorganizational efficiency post-NPM imaginaries emphasizes an interorganizational perspective and a pluralistic state where different actors – public and private – offer public services in collaboration (Osborne 2006) rather than in competition with each other.

Secondly, post-NPM focuses on the provision of public services. Within NPM, the modus operandi concerns the production of public services. Post-NPM imaginaries oppose this, claiming that the public sector should be about providing services (Lusch and Vargo 2006; Osborne 2018). Both the Public Value Management and Public Service Logic literature offer innovative ideas about the interactions between citizens and public organizations. Such interactions should arguably be characterized by something different than the marketized consumer relation that has been prevalent under NPM (Voorberg, Bekkers, and Tummers 2015). This change away from a Goods Dominant Logic (GDL) towards a Service Dominant Logic (SDL) (Osborne 2018) carries implications on how to manage processes within public organizations. SDL is about valuing the recipients of public services and allowing citizens to deem the value of those services, which seems appropriate at first glance. However, from a managerial perspective, delivering public services of high value within the post-NPM imaginary becomes increasingly dependent on communication skills and inclusion of citizens, as they judge the value of the service. The dystopian image of NPM as being primarily driven by a market and consumer logic is contrasted with a utopian image of inclusion and co-production. However, post-NPM imaginaries seem to neglect the risk of augmenting consumer relations. As public services are co-created (Eriksson 2019; Osborne, Radnor, and Strokosch 2016), public organizations’ sensitivity for creating citizen value increases, putting a stress on these organizations to balance wants (or even whims) of citizens with the rules and procedures of the state. The public service logics literature (Osborne and Strokosch 2013; Osborne, Radnor, and Strokosch 2016) discusses some of these challenges, but do not provide concrete advice for practice.

Third, post-NPM imaginaries focus on organizing effectiveness. Within this focus we find the underpinning question of why public services should be offered inter-organizationally and through provision rather than production. The answer to this question is that the public sector should create public value for its citizens (Moore 1995), a critique against the dystopian image of NPM and its emphasis on a productivity focused homo oeconomicus perspective (Shaw 2013). Rather than efficiency and outputs, post-NPM offers a utopian image of effectiveness, impact, and public value. These images have norms of ongoing dialogue within organizations (Moore 1995) in order to identify and develop social values (Stoker 2006). Post-NPM imaginaries draw on the deficiencies of micromanagement and internal focus of NPM to increase the legitimacy of the effectiveness focus. However, whilst doing this the post-NPM imaginaries fail to portray viable solutions for upholding managerial accountability and neglects the advantages of maintaining efficient organizations.

From the above we argue that what post-NPM imaginaries reflect are new ways of organizing public services, both vertically between government and other actors and horizontally in terms of inter-agency coordination. Organizations and organizing are discussed at (i) a societal level and (ii) at local levels. On a societal level, organizing is about the collaboration between different actors. These actors can be private, public, as well as non-profit organizations. On a local level, organizing is about collaborations between agencies or between professionals. This is an interorganizational perspective, intended to overcome the silo-thinking of NPM. On both levels, citizens are expected to partake in improvements and become involved in the public decision-making, i.e. through collaboration and co-creation.

When it comes to management control and managerial accountability, post-NPM imaginaries are less clear. The discussion about management accounting approaches, measures, and hierarchical accountability, which are commonly highlighted under NPM, is absent in post-NPM imaginaries. Instead, post-NPM deliberates the interactions of government and citizens, but reflects a lack of tools, models, and ideas regarding the governance of public organizations with an internal orientation, aimed at ensuring elevated levels of quality, efficiency, and managerial accountability. A common justification of NPM according to Hood (1991) is that accountability requires responsibility for assignments as well as transparent statements of goals. Combined with a scrutiny of performance, this provides a base for holding someone accountable for their actions. For this reason, we have seen that rules increase under NPM (Lapsley 2022). However, as post-NPM imaginaries are progressed as alternatives to NPM, accountability relations become more complex and ambiguous. Whereas multiple accountability relations may be suitable for an increasingly pluralistic approach to governance, there is a risk that the presence of intricate accountability structures aimed at bolstering the contractual networks of service providers pose challenges in pinpointing the specific agency or actor accountable for particular outcomes (Christensen and Lægreid 2015). Still, this ambiguity is hardly discussed in the post-NPM literature. Consequently, post-NPM imaginaries predominantly centre on novel approaches to structuring public services. As we will argue next, while this unidimensional emphasis may not inherently pose a problem as a social imaginary, it is not yet sufficiently evolved as a governance innovation (Reiter and Klenk 2019). We argue that the unidimensional emphasis on governance in post-NPM imaginaries poses a serious challenge to its capability to move beyond NPM.

Post-NPM imaginaries as unidimensional governance innovations

Chen and Tan Chen (2021) argue that one way of understanding how social imaginaries steer societies towards change is to analyse its ‘questions’. Whereas ‘if this goes on’ signals dystopias, ‘if only’ envision utopias and ‘what if’ pictures future possibilities. In our analysis of post-NPM imaginaries we have argued that it predominantly exists as a utopian imaginary. Legitimacy is first and foremost drawn from the fact that it serves as an alternative to its predecessor, NPM, which in many cases is portrayed as a dystopian imaginary. Although this has certainly been important for the emergence of post-NPM imaginaries, we believe that future theorizing needs to expand from this position and consider the completeness of post-NPM imaginaries and its future capabilities.

As we have discussed in length at previous stages of this article, post-NPM imaginaries are heavily dependent on NPM. Firstly, because post-NPM imaginaries are self-styled alternatives (Greve 2015) to NPM. The announcement that NPM has died (Dunleavy et al. 2006) has rendered several of these alternatives to be developed under the common flag of moving beyond NPM (Bryson, Crosby, and Bloomberg 2014; Christensen, Lie, and Lægreid 2008). The existence of post-NPM imaginaries is in this sense contingent upon the continued presence of NPM itself, and any cessation of NPM would render post-NPM obsolete. This means that instead of being empirically similar initiatives, it is the collective social imaginary of a dystopian picture of ‘if this goes on’ that binds post-NPM alternatives together (Emery and Giauque 2014). Second, post-NPM draws legitimacy from being a utopian alternative to (the dystopian) NPM. The fundamental issue raised by much of the post-NPM literature is one in which NPM is depicted as being wrong (Bryson, Crosby, and Bloomberg 2014; Osborne 2006) and post-NPM as the panacea. This legitimacy is, however, dependent on the absence of NPM elements.

An important detriment of current post-NPM imaginaries can be found in the dystopian projections of NPM. It is important to emphasize that these projections do have empirical grounding in studies exploring public administration organized under NPM. Studies have shown how NPM has resulted in a narrow focus on internal efficiency and cost focus (Kaboolian 1998), how political and professional ethos have been replaced with a quantification culture (Hood and Peters 2004) and how the audit society has resulted in stress, unhappiness and crowding out of motivation (Lapsley 2009; Power 1997). Through these studies we have acquired insights concerning the pitfalls of NPM. Still, in the post-NPM discussion almost every part of what is imagined to be faulty in the current state can and is being related to NPM in one way or another. Although all these observations are accurate and carry implications for public governance, it is also a hindrance for post-NPM imaginaries to progress towards the ‘what if’ scenario. The reason for this is that utopian and dystopian imaginaries are contradictions in many respects. That is, post-NPM is only needed if NPM exists. At the same time, the post-NPM utopian alternative to NPM cannot embrace any elements from NPM without losing its utopian character. In its current state, many of the imaginaries of post-NPM seem to be stuck in the dystopian and utopian phases. We believe this makes the post-NPM imaginaries move beyond NPM challenging.

In the previous section we discussed post-NPM imaginaries three focal points. These can be summarized as (i) new ways to govern, (ii) the provision of public services, and (iii) organizing effectiveness. These three points are all directed towards an external perspective, an aspect often overlooked in the NPM discussion. However, while NPM falls short in its consideration of external focus, the absent component for a comprehensive governance framework within post-NPM imaginaries revolves around mechanisms for safeguarding managerial control and ensuring managerial accountability. This causes post-NPM imaginaries to portray a unidimensional emphasis on governance and jeopardizes the potentially valuable things that can be found in NPM. The emphasis on an external perspective, coupled with a diminished focus on the internal viewpoint, renders post-NPM imaginaries as incomplete governance innovations that may have prioritized addressing the negative effects of NPM rather than a holistic approach to governance. For that sense, post-NPM serves to complement, rather than supplant, NPM. The important question of ‘what if’ we do like this and not the other way is crucial in the reformulation of utopian imaginaries into possible futures. If these are not complete – in the sense that they are unidimensional – any success will be unlikely (Christensen and Fan 2018; Moulton 2009). We believe that it is important for the post-NPM movement to acknowledge the downsides of making NPM into a dystopia, as this will only reinforce the existing unidimensional emphasis. While the post-NPM imaginaries may indeed introduce fresh perspectives and concepts to the public sector, it is unlikely to generate a comprehensive transformation or fundamentally alter the foundations of the public sector for the reasons mentioned above: the unidimensional emphasis on the external perspective and the focus on treating the effects of NPM rather than causes to different issues. Completeness could however be achieved through the ‘what if’ question and if post-NPM imaginaries were to be considered as supplements rather than replacement of NPM. This integration of elements from NPM as well as post-NPM imaginaries, referred to as layering (Hyndman et al. 2014; Lapsley 2017; Polzer et al. 2016), would allow for the inclusion of empirical reforms with elements of new emerging structures, systems and beliefs sedimented with pre-existing ones (Liguori 2012). However, to advance towards a potential future, the post-NPM movement must acknowledge the drawbacks of transforming NPM into a dystopian scenario. Instead, it should endorse the idea that the ‘old’ layers represented by NPM should be complemented by the introduction of new ones in the form of post-NPM. Post-NPM adds fresh perspectives to existing governance innovations. Perspectives that under NPM have been overlooked. Still, post-NPM is not a complete governance innovation since it mainly focuses on treating the negative effects of NPM. For this reason, we argue that the ‘what if’ question, the envisioning of a possible future, needs to incorporate the co-existence of both governance innovations. In the current debate of the relevance of NPM at 40+ this means that NPM is not at all dead. NPM is still very much alive and kicking (Pollitt 2016) and needs to be so since the post-NPM imaginaries only help us solve some of the issues the public sector is facing.

Conclusions

We as a community can feel indignation, frustration, and provocation by the effects and activities connected with NPM. We can also enthusiastically support, sympathize with, and feel compassion for the norms and the moral orders promoted within the post-NPM literature. These governance innovations all share the characteristic of being portrayed as an alternative to NPM. In this article, we argue that these alternatives are manifestations of self-styled alternatives (Greve 2015), or social imaginaries with sets of moral orders (Taylor 2007). Our argument is that new alternative governance innovations, specifically post-NPM, are unlikely to replace NPM, nor to expunge the enduring ramifications of decades long NPM governance.

In this article, we have introduced the concept of social imaginaries as a means of understanding governance innovations. Our argument is that the concept enables an understanding of how new ideas emerge and over time come to compete with already existing ideas. The strength of the social imaginaries concept is that it creates spaces for questioning existing norms and cultures and allows for new ideas about governance to emerge. In this article we have argued that post-NPM can be understood as such imaginaries, which inherently challenges the current norm of NPM within public organizations. Social imaginaries have unfortunately been absent in much of public administrative research (Chen and Tan Chen 2021). The theoretical foundation of accepting that our society builds on multiple modernities (Taylor 2002) where multiple social imaginaries co-exist or continuously challenges each other, presents scholars with valuable tools for analysing how governance innovations are coming and going, succeeding or failing. Especially the notion employed in this article where we have differentiated between dystopian, utopian, and future imaginaries is valuable for scholars. This differentiation makes it possible to theorize why certain governance innovations win over others, why they fall out of history, or why the existence of one becomes a prerequisite for the existence of the other.

Our argument is that post-NPM will face challenges connected to the aim of moving beyond NPM, and we present three arguments for why. First, post-NPM imaginaries are commonly presented as a persuading story filled with embedded magic concepts and value-laden words. The use of such words has created a hype around post-NPM with a strong vocabulary of motives (Grünberg and Matei 2020) that by themselves are almost impossible to criticize. The hype has enabled post-NPM imaginaries to gather incredible speed, spreading globally much the same way as NPM once did (Hyndman and Lapsley 2016; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2017). Second, post-NPM imaginaries focus on society and organizing but seem to neglect managerial accountability and control issues. By this we mean that post-NPM imaginaries try to redirect focus towards interorganizational perspectives and the pluralistic state but fail to take inter – as well as intra-organizational control and efficiency into account. We also argue that what post-NPM imaginaries are primarily about is the refocus towards public values, answering the question of why (or to whom) public organizations exist in the first place. Third, we argue that post-NPM imaginaries are unidimensional, primarily oriented towards mitigating the effects of NPM rather than presenting a comprehensive alternative paradigm. The primary driving force of post-NPM imaginaries lies in its self-styled alternative to a dystopian NPM. By positioning itself against this dystopia, post-NPM imaginaries draw legitimacy from being a utopia. Nonetheless, the dystopian and utopian pictures hinder the potential for a viable and possible future of coexistence between NPM and post-NPM.

At this point, it might be worth noting that we do not deem post-NPM inappropriate or unable to achieve some remedies to the negative effects that stem from NPM. Indeed, there are several empirical observations that are of interest (Connolly and van der Zwet 2021; Gregory 2006; Lodge and Gill 2011; Wittbom and Irene Häyrén 2021). However, our critique in this article revolves around the theoretical incompleteness and the (sometimes) shallow dystopian portrayal of NPM that can be found in this literature. From our perspective, post-NPM imaginaries and its theorizing need to address this. Post-NPM imaginaries would do good in reducing the accounts of making NPM into a dystopia. Although this has granted it some legitimacy over the last couple of years, it restricts post-NPM from what it may contribute with – adding new perspectives and ideas to already existing public sector paradigms. Imaginaries of possible future events need to acknowledge that there is a layering effect between different governance innovations. From this perspective, it is likely that post-NPM and other (older) governance innovations will necessitate a coexistence or integration into novel models, rather than outright displacement of one another. This implies that post-NPM imaginaries progress from being primarily a utopian normative idea. It also underscores that NPM will persist, as it addresses viewpoints distinct from those proposed by post-NPM.

An obstacle that has not yet been raised in the literature – as far as we know – is that NPM and post-NPM concern different aspects of governance. NPM, from a classical perspective, concerns an internal perspective where the creation of slim and efficient organizations is at the front. Post-NPM, however, concerns external perspectives where issues of public values and citizenry are at the front. To facilitate novel governance innovations – or to expand on the growing post-NPM literature – future theorizing should find ways to incorporate both perspectives into a holistic governance model. For that reason, we argue that post-NPM and NPM will become layered, where the former may provide new ways of organizing the public sector and the latter retain its perspectives on management and control of professional work in public organizations. This means that our argument here is that NPM is not a dead phenomenon but will continue to play an intricate and important part in the future of public governance. We argue that NPM could provide valuable mechanisms to resolve some of the challenges raised in this article. We will here touch upon some of these and what needs to be focused.

A first issue concerns intra-organizational control and managerial accountability. Post-NPM imaginaries need to address how effectiveness and efficiency can be measured and maintained in post-NPM organizations. They should also address questions of how publicly funded organizations and their employees can be held accountable for their actions (or inactions) when we have multiple accountability relations, as is inevitable in the pluralistic state. Another issue which needs to be addressed within post-NPM is the inherent risk of maintaining market drivers and customerization. Several studies have directed attention towards the negative effects from NPM in this regard, but it remains unsolved in post-NPM imaginaries. This becomes especially important in the context of implementing or enacting a public service logic, where citizens become important actors for the evaluation of public service values. A third issue which post-NPM imaginaries (so far) has not addressed concerns the importance of relevant performance measurements and accounting as part of interorganizational control. Naturally, the use of accounting and performance management has been connected to the detriments of NPM (Lapsley 2007, 2009; Steccolini 2019). However, it takes a somewhat simplistic viewpoint to assert that the effectiveness and performance of collaborations, networks, and co-creations in future governance should not be subjected to governance mechanisms. Post-NPM must find a way to integrate accounting and performance management of interorganizational collaborations into its framework.

Our aim in this article has been to critically assess the normative theorization which falls under the flag of post-NPM. More specifically we have discussed the challenges which post-NPM faces when trying to move beyond NPM. In this concluding section we have outlined some issues which we believe are important to address to truly come to terms with the negative effects which we commonly find in the wake of NPM. We urge fellow scholars to take note of this and to delve into inquiries regarding the potential for NPM and post-NPM approaches to complement, rather than compete with one another, with the aim of making the public sector work better.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).